Have you ever woken up in a foreign city, just pining to leave, and have to wait until the sleeper train departs at 9:35 pm and you have to wander this foreign city that hates you for hours on end hoping that it will end well?
Welcome to Belgrade.
Maybe my rendition of our full day in Belgrade was a bit, shall we say, diplomatic? Now, there were some good things, the best of which being the company we kept. Although we were loathed openly on our journey, bamboozled and shunned, we had a lot of fun. We didn't have a good time, but we had tons of fun.
But there was still more Belgrade to see. Overlooking the Danube, there is a beautiful city park with ruins from an old fortress, some interesting artwork, and a military museum (closed, unfortunately), but with plenty of tanks and artillery surrounding it for climbing and photographing.
And the bazaar in the park offered plenty of interesting merchandise, including a 500,000,000,000 dinar note (that's right, 500 billion), no longer in circulation, but on sale for bargain basement price of 300 dinar (or a shade over $4).
The day was pretty uneventful. We ended up killing time in the park, bench-sitting and people-watching, a definite favorite pastime of the group. And the people-watching in eastern Europe can beat all.
I decided it was time to endorse the local potato chip brand, Chipsy. How could you not? So for the train ride, I snagged a bag of "hot-dog flavoured flips" and another bag of bacon flavored deliciousness akin to pork rinds. Sounds gross, maybe, but don't judge. It's hard to purchase snack foods when you're options come in a variety of Cyrillic letters.
We got to the train station, and after a quick paid bathroom break (20 dinar), we boarded our train, found our compartment, and settled in for the night. Shortly after the train left the station, to not insignificant jubilation as we departed Belgrade, our ticket checker came and showed us how to properly gypsy-proof the door. Apparently locking the double locks won't keep out the theives and we were instructed to insert a metal rod through the locking mechanism to completely remove all possibility of anyone opening the door from the outside. The interesting part was when we were told that we wouldn't have to worry about thieves while we were still in Serbia. He specificially told us that it wouldn't be a problem until we crossed into Hungary, like the looters come out of the woodwork as soon as we cross the border. Another interesting slice of life in the Serbian nationalistic adventure.
A pill of Unisom later (which worked like magic), we all crashed majorly. In the haze of drug-induced sleep, someone came to our door and checked the passports. When he saw mine, he exclaimed "es kinder!" to our enjoyment. See, my passport is from when I was a shade shy of my 17th birthday, and it is an indictment of my babyface from those times. I look shockingly young and it always seems to get a chuckle out of whoever sees it.
But all that aside, we were on our way to Budapest, and couldn't be happier.
Welcome to Belgrade.
Maybe my rendition of our full day in Belgrade was a bit, shall we say, diplomatic? Now, there were some good things, the best of which being the company we kept. Although we were loathed openly on our journey, bamboozled and shunned, we had a lot of fun. We didn't have a good time, but we had tons of fun.
But there was still more Belgrade to see. Overlooking the Danube, there is a beautiful city park with ruins from an old fortress, some interesting artwork, and a military museum (closed, unfortunately), but with plenty of tanks and artillery surrounding it for climbing and photographing.
And the bazaar in the park offered plenty of interesting merchandise, including a 500,000,000,000 dinar note (that's right, 500 billion), no longer in circulation, but on sale for bargain basement price of 300 dinar (or a shade over $4).
The day was pretty uneventful. We ended up killing time in the park, bench-sitting and people-watching, a definite favorite pastime of the group. And the people-watching in eastern Europe can beat all.
I decided it was time to endorse the local potato chip brand, Chipsy. How could you not? So for the train ride, I snagged a bag of "hot-dog flavoured flips" and another bag of bacon flavored deliciousness akin to pork rinds. Sounds gross, maybe, but don't judge. It's hard to purchase snack foods when you're options come in a variety of Cyrillic letters.
We got to the train station, and after a quick paid bathroom break (20 dinar), we boarded our train, found our compartment, and settled in for the night. Shortly after the train left the station, to not insignificant jubilation as we departed Belgrade, our ticket checker came and showed us how to properly gypsy-proof the door. Apparently locking the double locks won't keep out the theives and we were instructed to insert a metal rod through the locking mechanism to completely remove all possibility of anyone opening the door from the outside. The interesting part was when we were told that we wouldn't have to worry about thieves while we were still in Serbia. He specificially told us that it wouldn't be a problem until we crossed into Hungary, like the looters come out of the woodwork as soon as we cross the border. Another interesting slice of life in the Serbian nationalistic adventure.
A pill of Unisom later (which worked like magic), we all crashed majorly. In the haze of drug-induced sleep, someone came to our door and checked the passports. When he saw mine, he exclaimed "es kinder!" to our enjoyment. See, my passport is from when I was a shade shy of my 17th birthday, and it is an indictment of my babyface from those times. I look shockingly young and it always seems to get a chuckle out of whoever sees it.
But all that aside, we were on our way to Budapest, and couldn't be happier.
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